


Il Sogno Di Volare

by spinstitcher (stygian)



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Circus, Domestic Avengers, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Avengers, clint and natasha have a bromance, get together fic even after they've already gotten together?, is that a thing?, phil coulson is a jedi master, relationships are hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-11 05:41:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stygian/pseuds/spinstitcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Carson’s Carnival of Travelling Wonders!</em> shrieks the flyer, in obnoxiously huge and purple script. <em>Now on its 51<sup>st</sup> Tour! Featuring Trick Shot, Madame Cassandra, and Various Marvellous Acts that will Take Your Breath Away! Six Magnificent Shows – Don’t Miss Out! Buy Your Tickets Now!</em></p><p>Clint goes back to the circus. This time, though, he’s got his team to back him up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a _Cirque du Soleil_ soundtrack. You can watch a video of the performance it accompanies [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scnF7yfkclM).
> 
> I'm borrowing elements from the comics, but this is largely film canon.

Clint wakes and his heart is thudding from a nightmare that he can’t remember. Phil is snoring like a jackhammer beside him, and he lets the noise calm him down, steadies his breathing, keeps his eyes closed until he’s calm enough to open them again.

Phil’s alive, New York is safe – for the moment at least – and Clint is completely in control of his own mind. Everything’s okay, for a given value of okay.

He climbs stealthily out of bed and peeks out of the window. It’s just starting to get light, pale lavender trails spreading lazily across the horizon.

“JARVIS?” whispers Clint, careful not to disturb his sleeping Phil. (‘Boyfriend’ is for people twenty years younger, ‘lover’ is trite. ‘Partner’ Clint kind of likes, but only in the context of ‘partner-in-crime’.) “What time is it?”

“Five thirty-two a.m.,” says the AI, equally quietly. JARVIS is a sweetie.

“Thanks,” says Clint, and shrugs on one of Phil’s ratty old shirts. Phil does own old shirts, he just refuses to wear them in public. Not even Phil wears a suit jacket to bed. Well, except on special occasions.

He pads down to the kitchen in bare feet, stomach grumbling. Tony is a crazy person and he’d planned out a whole floor of Avengers Tower for each of them, but the one thing Steve had insisted on was a communal kitchen. As much as Tony had grumbled about it, everyone knows he secretly loves shared mealtimes. The rest of them like it too, even if they’ll never admit to it, and even if the sight of Tony eating bagels is a cruel and unusual torture that they are forced to experience on a regular basis. Nobody should abuse bagels the way that Tony does. It’s tragic. Ancient Greek levels of tragic, with lots of murder and incest.

Despite the early hour, the kitchen isn’t empty when he gets there. Pepper’s reading the _Financial Times_ and Tony’s slumped on the kitchen counter, possibly unconscious. Pepper’s wearing orange cotton pyjamas that clash horribly with her hair and Tony’s wearing Iron Man boxers and nothing else. The arc reactor glows softly in its mess of scar tissue, but Tony’s marvellously unselfconscious about it. Clint’s not nearly as blasé about his own scars, but then again, Tony’s scars mark him out as a survivor, as a saviour. They’re noble. Clint’s scars are the exact opposite.

“Morning,” says Pepper, turning a page of her newspaper.

“Coffee,” moans Tony, flopping dramatically onto Pepper’s shoulder. Pepper is unsympathetic so he levels his puppy-dog stare at Clint. “Coffee?”

“I am not your coffee slave,” says Clint firmly, and starts to make himself some toast.

“Why do I keep you around then?” asks Tony, sounding honestly baffled.

Clint grins. “My charm and lovable wit?”

“Nope,” says Tony.

“My unparalleled aim and accuracy?”

“I have robots for that.”

Clint shrugs. “Then it’s probably my ass.”

“That’d be it,” says Pepper. Tony doesn’t say anything but his gaze drops down to Clint’s ass and he looks kind of shifty, which Clint takes as affirmation.

Because Clint is a beautiful, merciful human being, he fills the coffee pot and slides a mug across to Tony, who makes grabby hands and then slurps the whole thing up in about two seconds. After that he looks marginally more awake, or at least awake enough to steal the coffee pot. He doesn’t refill his mug; instead he starts drinking directly from the pot, but only after spooning in an absurd amount of sugar.

“You are a disgusting creature,” Clint tells him.

Tony makes an incoherent noise and Pepper rolls her eyes. “He knows,” she says long-sufferingly. “Believe me. He knows.”

Clint snorts and reaches for the mail robot.

This might require some explanation. It comes as no surprise to anybody that Tony is a massive technophile, and that his technophilia extends to every part of his life including the kitchen. Only Steve’s disapproval had prevented him from supplying every appliance in the Tower with an artificial intelligence, which is lucky because his blender is already plenty violent enough without giving it _urges_. Clint knows exactly what happens when you give AIs absolute power. _2001: A Space Odyssey_ is what happens.

Still, nothing and nobody had been enough to prevent Tony from creating a tiny little robot to fetch the mail from the lobby up to the kitchen. Because Tony is evil, he’d named it ‘the Mailinator’. Clint just calls it the mail robot.

Clint doesn’t actually get that much mail but the mail robot gets antsy when they don’t pay it enough attention, so he makes sure to check it every morning. Because otherwise it might sneak upstairs and murder him in his sleep. He’s not paranoid, he’s realistic.

Today is one of the rare days when he has actual mail, which is strange, because SHIELD just emails him and the only real, physical mail he usually gets is the occasional postcard from Natasha and Natasha’s not on any kind of op right now. In fact, as far as Clint knows, Tasha is still upstairs in her suite, curled up in her Egyptian cotton sheets and dreaming of beating people up.

It’s not real mail, anyway. Not a postcard or a letter or an electricity bill. It’s a flyer, printed on cheap, flimsy paper, and as soon as Clint sees what it’s advertising he feels as if all the air has been sucked out of his lungs.

 _Carson’s Carnival of Travelling Wonders!_ shrieks the flyer, in obnoxiously huge and purple script. _Now on its 51 st Tour! Featuring Trick Shot, Madame Cassandra, and Various Marvellous Acts that will Take Your Breath Away! Six Magnificent Shows – Don’t Miss Out! Buy Your Tickets Now!_

He turns it over numbly, and then freezes. On the back of the flyer someone has scrawled a frantic message just beneath his address. It reads: _Barton_ , and then, _Help us._

He knows that handwriting. There is a very short list of people in the world that Clint knows well enough to recognise their handwriting, and Marcella Carson is maybe third on that list.

Come to think of it, most of the people on that list are dead.

“Hey, Katniss,” says Tony. He pauses. “ _Clint_? Clint, are you in there?”

Clint shakes himself out of his reverie and turns to face him. If Tony’s using his real name then something is definitely wrong.

“Clint,” says Pepper, eyes widening. Obviously she sees something in his expression that worries her. “Is everything all right?”

“No,” says Clint, and breathes out slowly. “No. It’s not. I have to – I have to talk to Director Fury.”

“What, right now?” says Tony. “It’s not even six o’clock.”

“Yes, now,” snaps Clint, and then passes a hand over his eyes. “Sorry. Just. I can’t do this right now. I have to go.”

“I’ll get Happy to drive you,” says Tony at once, uncharacteristically serious. “JARVIS, wake up Phil, will you, tell him we’re –”

“No!” says Clint too loudly, and then winces. Tony and Pepper look shocked. Tony’s jaw is actually hanging open, though that isn’t actually that rare for Tony in the mornings. Tony just isn’t a morning person. “That came out wrong. Of course you should wake him. Tell him to meet me at base.”

“You don’t want him to come with us?” asks Tony carefully. Clint doesn’t miss the _us_ , but he doesn’t challenge it, either.

“This can’t wait,” he says, cutting his gaze away. He’s all turned around. That damned flyer... He hasn’t thought of the circus once in more than twenty years, and he’d hoped to keep it that way. It looks like his past is coming back to bite him on the ass whether he likes it or not.

“Sure,” says Tony. “Okay, sure. JARVIS, tell Phil to meet us at base.”

“Of course, sir,” says JARVIS. There is a brief pause, and then he says, “Agent Barton, Agent Coulson would like to inform you that he will meet you at SHIELD headquarters and that he would like an explanation upon arrival.”

“I’ll explain, I promise,” says Clint, feeling sick. As if he and Phil don’t have enough problems, after all the mind control, stabby aliens crap. Marcy Carson has the worst cryptic-distress-call timing in the world. If Clint weren’t so worried right now he’d be pissed as all hell.

The Helicarrier’s still being repaired, and in the meantime SHIELD’s decided to make the very sound tactical decision of camping out in a base that can’t be shot down by a couple of rogue agents and an alien with a grudge. For the moment the base is still in New York, but Fury’s been making noises about moving them out to somewhere less conspicuous. Still, being in New York means they’re right at hand for all the crazy shit that goes down here. Clint’s not sure if the Avengers chose to stay in New York because New York is a total danger-magnet or if New York is a total danger-magnet because the Avengers settled here, but either way it means they can respond quickly to supervillains and aliens and zombies and whatever the fuck else, so he’s not complaining.

The base is in Lower Manhattan, so it doesn’t take them long to get there, especially since Tony decides to drive Clint there himself in a show of solidarity. Tony drives like a maniac, which isn’t at all surprising because Tony _is_ a maniac.

Fury is not impressed.

Fury’s sort of perpetually unimpressed though, which is what happens when your surname is Fury.

“So let me get this straight,” says the Director, mainlining coffee with his feet propped up on his desk. Usually he’s all Show No Weakness, so it’s a little disconcerting, but then again the sun hasn’t even completely risen yet. “You got a flyer in the mail from the circus that you grew up in and now you think that shenanigans are going on, and you want to investigate.”

“Shenanigans. Yessir,” says Clint.

Fury stares at him. It’s very easy to tell when someone’s giving you the stink-eye when they only actually have one eye. Clint feels a little uncomfortable but it’s not as if he doesn’t have a couple of decades of practice of withstanding Fury’s hardass glaring.

At least he’d managed to convince Tony to wait outside, even if Tony’s definition of ‘waiting outside’ is ‘bouncing around like a toddler while harassing every SHIELD agent in sight as loudly as possible’. The walls of Fury’s office are made from reinforced steel and Clint can hear the guy from in here.

“I owe a debt,” says Clint. “If something’s going down at Carson’s then I need to be there.”

“You want me to sanction an undercover op into a _circus_ ,” clarifies Fury, eyebrows raised so high they look like they’re trying to escape off his forehead.

“It’s not that ridiculous,” says Clint defensively. “It could be a matter of national security. That circus birthed the Swordsman, you know, sword-wielding maniac mercenary for hire? It could be _swarming_ with supervillains.”

Fury sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fine. You’re due for some downtime. Think of it as a holiday.”

“A holiday where the holiday is actually an undercover op,” says Clint.

“Yes,” says Fury. “Exactly that kind of holiday.”

Clint can work with that.


	2. Chapter 2

Phil’s waiting for him outside Fury’s office and he doesn’t look happy. Tony’s disappeared off to somewhere, possibly the lab, possibly the ether; Clint’s not discounting the possibility that he’s been vapourised by the force of Phil’s glare.

“I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you,” Clint blurts out, before Phil can say anything. “This is important. Marcy’s in trouble.”

Phil’s expression doesn’t change, but that doesn’t mean anything with Phil. Phil is a master at the Blank Face of Oh-You’re-In-Trouble-Mister. “I’m not questioning whether it’s important, Agent Barton. I trust your judgement. But I’m your handler, and more importantly, I was _two floors above you_. You should have briefed me before you left.”

“Yeah, well, this is personal,” grumbles Clint, hunching his shoulders defensively. “Maybe I didn’t want you in on it.”

Phil is quiet and Clint feels a moment of crazy, all-consuming panic. He shouldn’t have said that. He doesn’t want to keep Phil in the dark about important things like this, even if they’re not precisely SHIELD-related and more Clint-related – _especially_ if they’re Clint-related. Why did he say that?

“Understood,” says Phil eventually, and turns on his heel and marches off to terrorise some underlings or something. Clint feels like he’s been punched in the stomach.

Tasha rests her chin on his shoulder and he fights the urge to flail around in shock. He’s known her for long enough that her secret ninja Russian ways should no longer surprise him. She probably crept out of an air vent or something. Clint can’t judge, he’s done the same. SHIELD should really work on decreasing the size of their air vents, it’s a security hazard.

“Well, you fucked that one up,” she observes.

“I know,” he says miserably. “Hey, you want to join the circus with me?”

She tips her head up so that she can meet his gaze. “Will it be violent?”

He shrugs, failing to dislodge her because she’s a _fucking ninja_. “Maybe.”

Her eyes are very blue and very dark. “Sure.”

“Cool,” says Clint. “Go get your clown costume, meet me at the garage in twenty.”

SHIELD has a legion of minions to do the dirty work on undercover ops, so it takes about five minutes for them to put together the relevant paperwork and supply Tasha with a false identity. There’s no point in giving Clint a false identity, not this time. Carson’s still has enough of the old crowd around that he has no hope of not being recognised as Clint Barton, World’s Greatest Marksman. (This is not arrogance. He really is the world’s greatest marksman, and he will fight anyone who says differently.) He does, however, stand a good chance of not being recognised as Hawkeye, agent of SHIELD and member of the Avengers Initiative. SHIELD’s pretty good at suppressing incriminating footage and they have yet to release his identity to the public, so nobody really knows who he is. They haven’t released Tasha’s identity either, but Tasha really likes creating new identities for new ops. Partly because she can then fake-kill her identities in really gruesome ways.

So: five minutes for paperwork and picking up clothes and toothpaste and shit, and fifteen minutes left to his own devices. Clint spends those fifteen minutes retrieving Rosie, the most beautiful creature in the world.

Rosie is his old longbow from back in his circus days, and she’s been living in a secure SHIELD lockup for the past twenty years. Clint had her transferred to the new base after the old base got crunched by the Tesseract. She survived because she’s an unkillable monster, kind of like the Hulk but smaller and without all the roaring. She’s laminated hickory and lemonwood, bright red – even redder than Tasha’s hair, if such a thing is even possible – and she has little purple flowers painted all over her upper and lower limbs.

Clint was thirteen, okay. He went through a creative phase.

The SHIELD garage isn’t exactly a garage and more of a hangar. Hangage. Half of it’s devoted to no-nonsense Jeeps (and some actually-quite-a-lot-of-nonsense Stark cars) and the other half’s devoted to cutting-edge sexy-as-fuck jet planes, including Tony’s baby, the work-in-progress which he’s calling the Quinjet. (Tasha’s taken to calling it the Quimjet. Loki taught her a new word. She thinks it’s hilarious.) Tony’s not happy about building it on SHIELD premises but in return they’re pushing through all the paperwork and licencing for him, so there’s that.

Clint’s really tempted to take one of the jet planes but Carson’s Carnival of Travelling Wonders is currently located in Brooklyn so it’d kind of be overkill. Also Clint wants to try and be subtle this time around. Clint can totally be subtle. He went to the Natasha Romanova School of Subtle. In Tasha’s world either you’re subtle or you’re dead. Clint is still alive, ergo he is subtle.

Tasha doesn’t actually get a clown costume but she does fetch the keys to Tony’s Lamborghini, which is almost as good. The only thing better than driving a Lamborghini is driving a stolen Lamborghini, and the only thing better than driving a stolen Lamborghini is driving Tony Stark’s stolen Lamborghini. For anyone else it’d be sacrilege to soup up such a beautiful car, but when Tony’s involved it means there are rocket thrusters. _Rocket thrusters_. Tony himself isn’t anywhere in sight, and Clint hopes that it’s not because Tasha’s left him drugged and unconscious in a gutter somewhere, but realistically that hope is kind of futile.

Tasha drives because Tasha is a control freak. Clint rides shotgun. He’s thrumming with nervous energy as they cross the Brooklyn Bridge, tapping his fingers in complicated patterns against Rosie’s belly. He can tell that Tasha’s getting annoyed by his fidgeting but he can’t stop himself. He’s going back to the circus, which he swore he’d never do, and he’s going back to Marcy, which he _hoped_ he’d never do considering that she used to push him into piles of elephant shit when they were kids. Yeah, he hasn’t forgotten that one.

He doesn’t have a functioning phone number for Marcy. When he last saw her, cell phones had only just entered the global market and nobody in the circus could afford one. They moved around too much to have a landline. He doesn’t have her email either, for obvious reasons. Marcy’s lucky she was still able to get in contact with him at all; his old P.O. box in Iowa still forwards mail to his current address, but only because he’s nostalgic.

Hopefully just rocking up to the circus won’t cause more problems than it solves, depending on what kind of trouble she’s in, but that’s why they’re going undercover. Someone’s got to be watching her, otherwise Marcy would have just sent a postcard or something. Still, she’s a smart cookie, and she won’t be entirely relying on Clint’s help. For all she knows he’s dead or in jail. Clint kind of wonders how many of those flyers she managed to sneak out, but he suspects it’s not many. Marcy never used to trust anyone outside the circus. Hell, Clint never used to trust anyone outside the circus, but things have changed. He’s changed.

They park the car in an out-of-the-way street where it’s only slightly less likely to be stolen. Still, Tony’s anti-grand-theft-auto measures are better than most; he has a truly evil mind when it comes to devising ways to trap unwary thieves. The rocket thrusters aren’t even the half of it.

Clint spots the brightly-coloured tents from a fair distance away, even though they’re obscured by Prospect Park’s dense clumps of trees. He’s not called Hawkeye for nothing. They’re new tents, but they’re still done up in the same colours of his childhood: bright yellow, brighter purple, all interspersed with thick scarlet stripes. Strolling through the park arm-in-arm with Tasha feels weirdly domestic considering that Clint’s completely batshit terrified and doing a bad job of hiding it. After Barney left, and after all that mess with the Swordsman and Trick Shot, he’d wrapped up all those feelings and squashed them down inside him. Now they’re all rising to the surface like old cadavers dislodged from a riverbed.

Clint’s a sniper – he’s not used to getting up close and personal with anything, least of all his own emotions. It puts him in an uncomfortable place, and even more uncomfortable is the knowledge that every little facet of emotion is completely laid bare to Tasha, who’s good enough at reading people that she might as well be flaying him open and reading his history from his bones. She’s kind enough not to say anything, though his turmoil must be glaringly obvious to her. Perhaps kind isn’t the right word. Tactful, maybe. Tactical. Tasha never does a single thing that doesn’t benefit her, and she knows how to bide her time.

The circus is closed to the public at the moment, and none of the stalls or surrounding rides are up and running, but the Big Top is swarming with activity for all that it’s only barely past sunrise. Late nights and early mornings, that’s how it goes. Clint remembers his childhood through a haze of sleep deprivation, and sometimes hunger too. Carson’s looks to be a lot more successful now than it was in the eighties, though. Maybe now that the world’s taken a turn for the crazy people are more inclined to appreciate a safer, beautiful kind of bizarre. Or maybe Marcy’s just better at running the circus than her pa ever was. Old Man Carson was a nice guy but he didn’t exactly have what you’d call business smarts. Marcy, though, she wouldn’t let starving kids tag along. She wouldn’t take any of that shit. Maybe Clint should be grateful that Marcy wasn’t in charge back in the old days.

A tiny pink-haired woman wearing fisherman pants catches sight of them sneaking through the fence, and comes over to shoo them away. “Sorry guys, the midway’s closed,” she says, frowning. “Come back later tonight.”

“We’re not tourists,” says Clint. “We’re here to see Marcy.”

If anything the woman looks even more worried. “Oh, well. I can take you to her caravan, but she’s very – she’s very busy right now. Does she know you’re coming?”

Clint exchanges a glance with Tasha, and then shrugs. “Not exactly,” he hedges. Best not to let on anything more than they have to, just in case. Everything _looks_ ship-shape around here but Clint knows by now not to assume based on appearances. “We’re old friends. She’ll want to see me.” _Friends_ is stretching the truth a little, but he owes Marcy something, even if it’s not friendship.

“All right then, but you’d better make it quick,” warns the woman. “I’m Daphne. Don’t waste my time.”

“Clint,” says Clint.

“Nimue,” says Tasha. Someone’s been reading up on their Malory. It kind of suits her, but Clint doesn’t want to think too hard about _why_ it suits her.

“Come on then,” says Daphne, striding off towards the caravans. Clint and Tasha hurry to keep up with her. “No time for dilly-dallying. We’ve got a show to rehearse.”

“How’s that going?” asks Clint. “I haven’t been around in a while, but it looks like you’re doing well for yourselves.”

“Well enough,” says Daphne, shrugging one shoulder, and doesn’t elaborate.

Marcy’s caravan is new like the tents, shiny and neat-looking. Old Man Carson’s caravan was a beast of a thing, always breaking down, so Clint’s not surprised she replaced it. It’s been twenty years. She’s replaced a lot of things.

Not everything, though. He catches sight of a few familiar faces while they’re crossing the lot. A couple of them recognise him in return, or at least recognise Rosie; he’s a little galled that nobody looks surprised. Clint is _totally_ capable of leaving the circus and creating a new, healthy life for himself free of carny influences. The circus isn’t some infectious thing that you can never get rid of. The fact that he’s back here after all this time is just – coincidence. He refuses to feel sentimental about it.

Daphne raps on the door of the caravan. “Got a couple of lot lice here to see you, Marcy,” she calls out. “One of ‘em says he’s a friend of yours.”

The door opens and Clint sucks in a sharp breath.

There are some new lines etched around her mouth and eyes, and some strands of grey threaded through her black hair, but it’s still the same old Marcy Carson. She doesn’t look pleased to see him – in fact she looks kind of pissy – but Marcy always did look pissy. Clint’s starting to think it’s not any kind of emotional thing, it’s just the way her face looks.

“Barton,” she says.

“Marcy,” he returns. “Good to see you.”

“Wish I could say the same,” she says darkly, and then sends a quick look back into her caravan. Clint catches a hint of movement; she’s not alone. “You’re here for a job?”

He studies her expression for a moment. She’s staring at him hard. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “If you don’t have room for any more acts I’m guessing you can always use a couple of roustabouts.” Something’s going on here and he doesn’t like it. There are very few things in the world that can make Marcella Carson run scared; he’s pretty sure she’s not hiding zombies or hairless cats in her caravan, though, so that narrows down the list a little. He’s glad – those hairless cats are fucking creepy.

“Come into my parlour,” she deadpans, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. Will you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly. ‘Tis the prettiest little parlour...  

Clint and Tasha share a glance. She raises her eyebrows. He shrugs.

They follow Marcy inside.


	3. Chapter 3

The caravan is cluttered with bookshelves and pots and pans and all sorts of circus equipment. Clint sidles around a big bundle of hoops, and then almost clunks his head on a diabolo inexplicably strung up from the ceiling. There are a tiny table and chairs crammed into the kitchenette, and a man folded into the corner, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

Clint doesn’t recognise the guy, but his hackles rise instinctively at the sight of him. His face is in shadow, and he doesn’t move or greet them, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Marcy for even a moment. He’s thin and pale and wearing a dark blue hoodie. He gives Clint the creeps and he can tell that Tasha’s just as wary. Something doesn’t feel right. This guy isn’t just a kooky ex-boyfriend or an IRS goon. Marcy’s being careful, too careful, and Clint knows without having to ask that this is the reason she’d called for help. Marcy wouldn’t ask for help lightly, especially not from someone that she hasn’t seen in twenty years. This is serious.

Clint needs to get her alone. They’re not going to learn anything with this guy hovering in the background like fucking Edward Cullen.

Marcy slumps into one of the chairs with a sigh, waving at them to join her. They sit down across the table and wait for her to say something. Serious Face in the corner doesn’t introduce himself, or move to join them, so Clint resolves to ignore him. Obviously there’s something skeevy going on here, and he’s not going to get involved until he knows what it is.

“How’s your aim?” Marcy asks, cocking her head.

“As good as it always was,” says Clint, and smirks. “By which I mean fucking fantastic.” He doesn’t ask the obvious question, which is: why are you interviewing me for a job that I don’t want, when it’s you that called me here in the first place? Obviously with Mr. Loomy in the corner over there Marcy’s not comfortable speaking freely about her circumstances. Clint’s willing to play along, at least for now.

“I dunno,” she says, stretching out a little. “Buck’s still hanging around, you know. I’m not sure I really need another wiseass archer.”

Clint shoots her an outraged look. “Buck – you mean _Trick Shot_? That decrepit old bastard? He’s got to be, what, a hundred years old by now? Pit him against me in the ring and I guarantee I can wipe the floor with him.”

Marcy starts to laugh. “Well, your looks may have improved, but your ego certainly hasn’t. It’s good to see you again, Barton.”

“My ego is a perfectly normal size for a human being of my awesomeness,” says Clint, and then leans forward, fluttering his eyelashes. “And unlike some, I’ve managed to age gracefully.”

“Gracefully my ass,” says Tasha.

“I like you,” Marcy tells her.

Tasha grins like a shark.

Clint pretends to ignore them. “So how about it? Reckon you can fit us into the show?”

“You, maybe,” concedes Marcy, “but her? What can she do?”

“What do you need her to do?” counters Clint. “Acro, fire dancing, knife throwing, classical ballet – she’s got skills coming out of her ears.”

Marcy gives Tasha an assessing look. “One of our fire dancers sprained her ankle last week. The act needs four people – we were going to ditch it but if you’re up to scratch we might be able to squeeze you in.”

“Works for me,” says Tasha.

“Only if you’re good enough,” says Marcy. “Report to Abhi in the Big Top, if you can learn the act by next Saturday then you’re in. Otherwise you’re on poster duty.”

“I am also very skilled at putting up posters,” says Tasha dryly.

Marcy grins, but there’s something hollow about it. “Barton, you go and find Buck, see if he can incorporate you into his act. It’s short notice, though, so don’t expect him to be pleased. You might not end up performing until our next show.”

“I’ll see about that,” says Clint, but he’s stuck on something. “You’re not going to come with us, show us around? It’s been a while.”

“Nah,” she says. Her expression looks strained, like she’s trying not to betray something. “I’ve got work to do. The circus won’t run itself.” She glances to the man in the corner, and he nods.

Clint suppresses a scowl.

“Fine,” he says abruptly, and stands up. “I’ll go find Buck. His caravan still look the same?” Honestly, the very last thing he wants to do right now is go meet up with Buck fucking Chisholm. They’ve got history and not the good kind, not Gandhi or the discovery of the Higgs Boson, no, theirs is more like Pompeii and Herculaneum and Jack the Ripper. Looks like he doesn’t have much of a choice, though. Fuck, this is exactly why he didn’t want to come back.

“It’s a new one, but yeah, it’s still painted the same,” says Marcy. She darts a look at the guy in the corner again, and then clears her throat. “Check in with the paymaster first. We’re not doing cash in hand shit anymore, he’ll need to get your details. He’s in the blue caravan. I’ll text him to let him know you’re coming.”

“You’re sure moving up in the world,” says Clint, not sure what to think about that.

Marcy smirks. “It’s the world that’s moving, Barton. I’m just tagging along for the ride.” Marcy always was into that kind of guru shit. I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar. As far as Clint’s concerned it’s all just various degrees of bullshitting. Phil, though, Phil just eats it all up. For the first couple of years he spent as Clint’s handler he alternated between calling him “young padawan” and “grasshopper” and nothing and nobody could get him to stop, right up until Clint filled in a whole stack of twenty-seven B stroke six forms all by himself, at which point Phil declared that he had graduated Jedi Academy and may the force be with him.

Clint’s pretty sure there’s no such thing as Jedi Academy.

Pretty sure.

He pauses with his hand on the edge of the door, a thin stripe of sunlight falling over his arm. “See you later, I guess,” he says, without turning around. “After I kick Buck’s ass.”

Marcy lets out a low chuckle, and Clint opens the door and jumps down to the ground, skipping the steps entirely. Tasha follows him, though he has to actually check to confirm that. Clint’s hearing isn’t great at the best of times – though he figures his eyesight makes up for it – and Tasha’s quieter than a cat. A big cat, a leopard or a lioness, with big claws to match.

Clint glances around a bit until he sees a blue caravan over in a corner of the lot, and starts to walk towards it. It’s actually a pretty rare colour in these parts. Circus folk tend to go for crazy, vibrant colours, not demure duck-egg blue. Last time he was around the paymaster was old Reggie, but he’s not labouring under any illusions; it’s been twenty years, and Reggie’s probably dead by now. He’s not weeping over it or anything. Reggie was a bit of a dodgy character, and he was part of the reason why Clint had to leave the circus in the first place.

They walk in silence for a couple of minutes and then Tasha nudges him gently. A gentle nudge in Tasha-speak, that is, which means that in Clint-speak it’s a vicious elbow to the ribs. “Something’s going on there,” she says, somewhat obviously. “Want me to tail Edward Cullen?” Clint hasn’t mentioned out loud that his mental nickname for the guy is Edward Cullen. This is why he and Tasha are platonic soulmates. He’s not theoretically opposed to them being non-platonic soulmates, except for the fact that she’d eat him for lunch and Phil would either a) think it was the funniest thing in the world or b) never forgive him. Clint used to think he knew Phil inside-out, but these days he can’t predict him very well.

“Follow him around a bit, but keep it on the down-low for now,” he says. Clint’s been refusing to use the phrase ‘low-key’ ever since Thor moved into the tower and started sobbing every time he misheard him. “We don’t want to let him know we’re onto him, but we need to know what he’s up to. I’ll see if I can get Marcy alone. Until then, don’t break cover.”

Tasha nods sharply and doesn’t say anything more. The closer they get to the blue caravan, the blanker her face gets. Clint doesn’t pay it any mind. Occasionally she and Phil like to have Whose-Face-is-the-Blankest? competitions, and Tasha likes to practice at weird moments.

He knocks on the caravan’s door, shave-and-a-haircut, and waits for a moment. He thinks of Reggie, Reggie with his balding hair and scraggly beard that used to have magpie feathers tied into it. Reggie was an ass but he was also a constant, and constants have always been such a rare thing to Clint that he appreciates them where he can find them. So many things are different.

The door opens and Phil pokes his head out.

“Hi,” he says.

“What,” says Clint. He stares wildly from Phil to Tasha and back again. Phil’s face is very blank. Tasha’s face is even blanker. Tasha’s winning this round.

Phil’s wearing jeans and a button-up shirt that looks suspiciously like one of Steve’s. He’s barefoot and there’s mud between his toes and he’s holding a clipboard.

“What the hell is going on?” demands Clint.


	4. Chapter 4

“You’re on an undercover op,” says Phil. “I’m your undercover handler.”

“Yes – but –” Clint flails a little. “It’s not an official op. Not really. Not safety-of-the-planet-depends-on-it official.”

“Director Fury sanctioned it,” Phil reminds him. “Otherwise you’d be on an unsanctioned op and I’d be forced to bring you home. Don’t make me get out the handcuffs.”

Clint’s mouth goes dry and he clears his throat. “All right,” he says. It comes out as a squeak. He tries again. “All right, it’s official. Who’s complaining? I’m not complaining. No need for handcuffs. Except maybe later.” Phil and handcuffs are a match made in some kind of heaven. Okay, so Clint’s a bit kinky. He was raised around hippy circus sex-positive types, is anybody surprised? _Nobody_ is surprised. Clint loves his body and he lov – is in a stable relationship – somewhat stable relationship with Phil, and he’s not ashamed of his desires or his fantasies. Especially not the one with the chocolate sauce.

Tasha looks at him and smirks and he knows that she knows exactly what he’s thinking. He refuses to blush. Okay, he’s blushing. Lesser humans have blushed under the force of that smirk, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Natasha’s a superspy, it’s her job to be omniscient. It’s not her job to gloat about being omniscient but she does that anyway. Because she is _evil_.

“I’m told you need to get my details,” he says, for lack of anything else to say.

“I already have your details,” says Phil, and stares at him. Phil’s eyes are hot and promising and suddenly Clint’s heart is beating faster and his skin is prickling and he doesn’t know where to look.

“Okay then,” he says, and swallows. “I guess we’re done here.” What? No! That’s not what he meant to say! He meant to say – shit.

“Guess so,” says Phil agreeably. “Course, you might want to stick around a little, check out your new quarters.”

Clint frowns at him. “My new quarters?”

Next to him Tasha rolls her eyes exaggeratedly, as if to bemoan the fact that she’s always surrounded by idiots. Clint has no sympathy for her. It’s her own fault for joining SHIELD. If she didn’t want to be surrounded by idiots all the time then she should have gone to live as a sheep-herding hermit in the wild mountains of Appalachia.

Phil nods to his caravan. “Your new quarters. _These_ new quarters,” he says meaningfully.

“Are you asking me to move in with you?” asks Clint weakly.

Now Phil’s rolling his eyes too. Well, fine. Clint was only asking.

“You’re undercover,” Phil says. “It’s not going to look suspicious at _all_ if you’re driving back to Manhattan every night.” That was sarcasm. Clint’s good at sarcasm. He’d have a PhD in sarcasm by now if he hadn’t run away to the circus partway through elementary school. “There aren’t a whole lot of spare caravans, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“So get a new one,” says Clint. “SHIELD can afford it.” What is he doing? Why is he arguing against this? He’s been wanting to move in with Phil for, like, _half his life_. If Stark hadn’t done his whole a-floor-for-everyone, yes-including-the-agent-recovering-from-a-stab-wound, the-man-needs-his-space-Clint thing, they’d have been properly cohabiting since the moment Phil was released from SHIELD medical. As it is they only share a bed maybe four nights out of seven. It’s usually Phil’s bed, because Phil’s got a king-size whereas Clint’s got a bunk bed. Clint isn’t going to apologise for that. Bunk beds are awesome.

“SHIELD might be able to afford it, but _we_ can’t afford to attract too much attention,” says Phil. “I couldn’t get Ms Carson alone, I’m guessing you couldn’t either. We need to fly under the radar on this one, unless you want to end up as sparkly vampire bait.”

 _This_ is why he and Clint are soulmates.

“If you snore I reserve the right to smother you with a pillow,” says Tasha.

Wait. Wait a second.

“If you smother me with a pillow I reserve the right to handcuff you to a table leg,” says Phil.

Wait, _what_?

“Wait,” says Clint. “Wait right there. Tasha’s staying here too?”

Phil gives him an are-you-stupid-no-you’re-not-stupid-I-oversee-your-test-results-myself look. “Shortage of caravans, Barton. We’ve been over this.”

“But,” says Clint, and hesitates. But it’s less romantic? It’s a tiny, crappy little caravan in a sea of equally crappy caravans; romance was never really part of the equation. But he doesn’t trust Tasha to sleep in the same space as him? He’s done it before – hell, they’ve shared an air vent. But he wants Phil to himself? He can’t say that _out loud_.

Phil raises his eyebrows. “Problem, Barton?”

“No sir,” he says, defeated. “No problem at all. I’m really looking forward to our super secret slumber party. It’s gonna be great. Can we paint each other’s toenails?”

“Sure,” says Tasha. “And then afterwards we can braid each other’s hair.”

“I’ll bring the popcorn,” says Phil. “You want to take a peek inside?”

Clint hesitates. “How many beds?”

“One.”

“I’ll take the floor,” says Tasha immediately.

“I’ll take the bed then,” says Clint.

“ _We’ll_ take the bed,” says Phil. “Did you forget which of us is currently recovering from a stab wound?”

Clint blanches and drops his gaze. No, he hasn’t forgotten, though he’s certainly tried to. For about five hours he’d genuinely believed that Phil was dead, and he’d felt like the whole world had ended. Stop all the fucking clocks. But in their line of work death is never really certain, and not just for supersoldiers like Steve. Phil had clocked out on the Helicarrier, but SHIELD medical had played around with Loki’s magic glowstick and somehow managed to bring him back, along with about a dozen other agents. This time Phil managed to pull through, and Clint is endlessly, hopelessly grateful for that.

It’s a double-edged sword, though, this dance with death. On the one hand, sometimes you can get a comrade back, or a lover, or a Phil. On the other hand it means that every time someone goes down in the field you can never really get over them – you’re always constantly waiting and hoping that they might come back somehow, that it might have been a Skrull or an LMD or a government ruse or whatever the hell else. And there’s plenty of agents who don’t ever come crawling back out of their graves.

Not just agents. Friends. Allies.

Brothers.

Phil’s expression hasn’t changed but his eyes are creased at the corners in a faintly apologetic way. Clint shrugs at him and pulls a face. Clint’s fine. It’s cool. Or at least he will be fine, and it will be cool, eventually. Hopefully.

“I’ll skip out on the grand tour, if you don’t mind,” says Clint. “If I’ve got to deal with that old rat bastard then I’d best get it over with.”

“Old rat bastard?” repeats Phil carefully.

“Buck Chisholm,” says Clint. “Trick Shot.”

“Ah,” says Phil. _Ah_. Phil knows his history with Buck, and it’s not pretty. Clint had initially been apprenticed to the Swordsman, and _that_ had gone to shit, and then he’d been apprenticed to Trick Shot and that had gone to shit too. Buck had saved his life once or twice but the last time Clint saw him Buck had planted an arrow in his shoulder and threatened to kill him.

Buck’s probably over it by now, but still, it’s a good thing that Clint’s still young and agile while Buck’s a crumbly old dinosaur.

“I’ll go too,” says Tasha. “I’ve got a routine to memorise.”

“Let me guess,” says Phil. “There’s fire involved.”

“Fire _dancing_ ,” she says, looking pleased. “My two favourite things.”

“Those are not your two favourite things,” says Clint. “I call bullshit. Your two favourite things are pistachio ice cream and shooting people.”

“I do like shooting people,” she concedes.

Any of their other handlers would be suppressing giggles or trying to escape by now, but Phil looks entirely serene. He wiggles his muddy toes a little, and then nods to them. “You two have fun with your circus arts, now. Don’t shoot anyone, Barton.”

“I’ll resist the urge,” promises Clint.

Phil turns to Tasha next. “Don’t strangle anyone with your thighs.”

She looks heartbreakingly disappointed.

Clint rips off a half-assed salute and then starts to wander over to Buck’s caravan, which is a bit closer to the Big Top than the others, probably so that Buck doesn’t have to lug his gear all over the place. There are other circus artists here who work with heavier or bulkier equipment, but Buck’s been around for like a hundred years by now, clawing his way up to the top of the circus hierarchy. He always did like to be on top. On top in the Big Top. Heh.

Tasha peels off partway, slinking off to scare the crap out of whatever poor soul’s in charge of the fire brigade here. Clint’s only a little bit worried. He’s mostly certain that she’s not actually going to kill anyone. She might set fire to some things, but that’s what fire blankets are for.

Buck’s caravan is still garishly pink, just like it always was. Clint bites down a grimace as he approaches.

He knocks on the window and then on the door, lacking even the energy to knock in a stupid pattern, and then waits.

And waits some more.

He knocks again and waits and knocks and finally ascertains that Buck’s either not in his caravan or he’s died and nobody’s noticed. Clint wouldn’t really mind the latter but he’s betting on the former.

This is the point where he uses his super special ninja assassin tracking abilities, i.e. he calls Phil. Phil, like Tasha, is omniscient in all things. Well, most things.

Phil answers the phone with an exasperated sigh that Clint secretly finds kind of hot. “Barton.”

“Buck’s not in his caravan, where can I find him?” Clint asks without preamble.

Phil pauses for a moment, probably taking a stroll through his seemingly inexhaustible memory palace. The guy’s only been here for like five minutes and he already knows everything there is to know about the intimate day-to-day details of the circus. “There’s a training range out behind the caravans,” he says. “If he’s not there, try the Big Top. If he’s not in the Big Top, try the bar.”

“Got it,” says Clint. “He’s either shooting things or getting drunk. Or getting drunk and shooting things. Sounds like he hasn’t changed a bit.” Yeah, Clint really isn’t looking forward to this.

Sure enough, he finds Buck out by the shooting range, sending squirrely wooden arrows thunking into ratty-looking foam targets.

Buck’s aim isn’t bad, not really. It’s not anywhere close to Clint’s, but then Buck’s aim was never quite as good as his apprentice’s even when he was a spry man of fifty-nine, and now he’s basically one big wrinkle. Clint’s a little impressed despite himself. He hopes he’s still on the shooting range when he’s a hundred and fifty.

Realistically, of course, Clint will probably be dead _long_ before then. His line of work isn’t known for its long life expectancies. But a guy can dream.

Buck notices him when Clint’s still about forty yards away. He stands and gawps for a moment, and then he sends an arrow hurtling towards him, which Clint quickly dodges.

Well, that could have gone better.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for... not so much bad language as weird language.

Buck starts cussing and clambering over towards Clint, lugging his big old longbow with him. He doesn’t shoot at him again but Clint’s ready to duck just in case. Evidently Buck’s still sore from their last encounter, which, well, Clint could have predicted that, in fact he _did_ predict that, which just goes to show that Phil and Tasha aren’t the only omniscient ones around here and obviously Clint’s acquiring some psychic abilities of his own.

Buck stops about three feet away from Clint and looks him up and down. He’s silent for a moment and then he turns his head to the side and spits. He looks back to Clint and his face is all wrinkled up, partly from old age and partly from a fearsome scowl. “You got taller,” is all he says.

“Taller and meaner,” says Clint, puffing himself up a little. He contemplates swivelling to show off his arm muscles but decides that it’s a bit too petty. “You got shorter.”

“I did not get shorter, you little prick-faced fuck-nobbler,” says Buck, face going red. Clint’s pretty sure that Buck just makes most of his cuss words up on the spot. “You fucking take that back.”

Clint looms, just a little bit, to prove his point. He’s given up on not being petty. Buck’s scowl gets deeper.

“Look,” says Clint, “as much as I’d missed our witty banter – that’s sarcasm, by the way, you’re not at all witty – I’m not here to exchange pleasantries. Marcy wants me back in the show.”

“The fuck she does,” says Buck, going even redder. If any more blood rushes into his head then his brain’s going to explode and it’s not going to be pretty. Clint refuses to be blamed for any brain-exploding eventualities.

“I’m doing her a favour,” says Clint. “It’s not negotiable.”

“Not negotiable my nipple-twiddling _ass_ –”

“As much as I hate to admit it,” cuts in Clint, “you’re not an idiot. You _know_ there’s something weird going on here. I’m here to help Marcy out and once that’s done I’m outta here. So if you want me to get out of your – I would say hair, but, well... if you want me to get out of your wrinkles you’d better shut up and lend me some arrows.”

Buck’s quiet for a long moment, and some of the colour drains out of his face. “I told you that damned conscience of yours would come back to fuck you in the ass,” he says eventually. He sounds exhausted and old. “Looks like I was right.”

“Yeah, well.” Clint shrugs. “Ass-fucking’s kind of a hobby of mine.”

Buck grins with a lot of teeth and then slaps an arrow into Clint’s hand. It’s a shitty arrow. Buck makes them himself and Clint’s willing to bet his hands aren’t as steady as they used to be. “You been practicing?”

Clint snorts. “You could say that.”

“Then prove it,” says Buck, and nods towards the range.

Clint slings Rosie off his back and pulls back her string, propping the arrow against her body. His draw is longer than Buck’s, so the arrow’s a little shorter than he’s used to, and his weight and height have changed in the last twenty years, so he and Rosie aren’t a perfect fit any more, but he’s made better shots with worse equipment. The trouble with too-short arrows is that you're liable to shoot yourself in the hand, but Clint's careful. Rosie doesn’t have a peep sight but Clint doesn’t need a goddamn peep sight at this distance. He doesn’t bother walking down to the range proper.

“Cock-flumping showboating asshole,” mutters Buck under his breath. Clint ignores him.

String tickling his nose and lips, knuckles brushing his chin, Clint takes a deep breath and then releases the arrow.

It hits the bullseye dead centre and Buck starts cussing even louder. Clint grins and relaxes, sliding Rosie back into her makeshift sheath. “Good enough, old man?”

“All right,” says Buck. “All right, you’ve made your fucking point. Get back to the Big Top and get Ariadne to run you through the routine. I’m not your bloody babysitter.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” says Clint, mouth quirking. He jogs back over towards the Big Top, Rosie thudding gently against his back.

Old Buck’s not so bad. He’s a total asshole but he’s not so bad, not compared to some of the other assholes that used to be in the circus. Clint thinks he’s mellowed out in his old age.

The Big Top’s something like a star surrounded by orbiting planets; it’s one enormous tent with a bunch of smaller tents scattered around outside it. The smaller tents are for spotlighted acts to keep people interested before the show, or for sidestalls like coconut shy and hoopla and ball-in-the-basket. There are a few scattered food stalls with corn dogs and candy floss hiked up to absurd prices. Further away there are rickety old Ferris wheels and bouncy castles and cup-and-saucer rides. Clint is really tempted to sneak-hijack the bouncy castle instead of going to the Big Top, but it’s best he start working himself into Buck’s routine as soon as possible. Knowing Buck, he’ll invent random problems just to spite Clint.

The interior of the Big Top is pretty much exactly how he remembers it. Sure, the infrastructure’s technically new, but the layout and the colours are just the same. There are a few extra safety precautions and a few new people but that’s about it. There’s one big stage in the centre with three smaller stages around it, and space for seating circled all around the stages. At the moment the acrobalancers are practicing on the big stage, and two of the smaller stages are taken up by fire dancers practicing with unlit staffs, fans and poi. Clint spots Tasha in their midst looking as if she’s been there all her life. For a moment he thinks the third stage is empty, but then he sees Daphne up in the rafters delicately spinning around a swinging single trapeze. The soft overhead lights catch in her pink hair and she looks like she’s glowing, like she’s some crazy beautiful circus deity watching over all of them.

Ariadne’s over in the corner with one hand on a dinky little StarkPod speaker, helping the acrobalancers fit their act to the music. Ariadne’s an old hat at this stuff. She started out at Carson’s when she was a kid, a year or two before Clint left. Frankly Clint’s kind of surprised that she’s stuck around this long – he’d always kind of thought that she’d leave, go to college, get her Masters in microbiology. She was always sneaking textbooks in to read in between acts, whenever she could catch a spare minute. Obviously her priorities have changed, or maybe she just never got her chance to follow her dream.

Clint wanders up behind her and pokes her in the shoulder. “Hey.”

She glances up, and for a second she doesn’t recognise him, and then her face goes lax and shocked and she brings her hands up to her mouth. “Clint?”

“The one and only,” he says, grinning crookedly. “How’ve you been?”

“How’ve I been?” she repeats. “We haven’t seen you in twenty years and you ask how I’ve _been_? I’m great, you asshole! How have _you_ been? Don’t answer that. _Where_ have you been?”

“Here and there,” he says, and shrugs. “Taking down crime syndicates, battling dragons. That sort of jazz.” The great thing about his job is that he can be totally honest about it and people just think he’s being sarcastic. This is probably because Clint is made up of 40% human DNA and 60% sarcasm.

Ariadne punches him in the shoulder and then hugs him. “If you leave again before I have a chance to properly interrogate you, Imma hunt you down and kill you,” she says, muffled into his shoulder. “With one of your own arrows. Yeah. See how you like that.”

He hugs her closer and rests his chin on the top of her head. Her hair is blonde and wavy and soft, like candy floss. “So violent,” he murmurs. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“I’ve changed a lot,” she says. “I got a tattoo. And a hysterectomy. That’s what happens when you abandon people and don’t even send a postcard in twenty years. Things change.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Stuff came up.” She’s the first person he’s apologised to, but if he’s going to apologise to anyone at least Ariadne won’t rub his face in it.

She releases him and rubs at her eyes a bit, then sits back down next to the StarkPod. One of the acrobalancers gives her a thumbs up and she switches tracks.

Clint plonks down next to her, watching the acrobalance routine. It’s pretty polished – they’re just running through dress rehearsals, repeating some of the trickier bits, making sure that the costumes don’t impede their movements. They’re wearing dark red unitards decorated with glittering orange flames around the wrists and ankles, and feathery headdresses, and alien, exotic-looking makeup in vibrant gold and white with thick red lipstick. He recognises a couple of them, but it’s hard to tell who’s who under all that makeup.

“I’m back in the show, at least for a little while,” he says finally. “Buck says you can help me learn his act?”

Ariadne frowns a little and pulls a little spiral-bound notebook out of her back pocket. “Buck’s act is pretty Buck-centric,” she says, flipping through the pages. Her handwriting is cramped and purple. “We should be able to work you in there somehow, though. We can adapt one of your old double-act routines.”

“I didn’t bring any equipment, other than Rosie,” he says, gesturing to his bow. SHIELD-developed weapons-grade arrows wouldn’t exactly let him fly under the radar, and there’s a reason he brought his old circus bow rather than Maggie, his beautiful folding recurve bow that Tony helped to augment.

“That’s fine,” she says absently. “Mostly we just have Buck on the ground working with the tumblers. This time around Nancy put together some flaming arrows for us... We could put you up high, set you and Buck against each other. Can you still get up there?”

“I’m still young and limber, if that’s what you mean,” says Clint. “Put me in a harness and give me a bow and I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Hmm,” Ariadne says, and scribbles something down, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth. “Can I dress you up like a pirate?”

“Lady, you can dress me up like a lobster. Whatever floats your boat.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she says, pointing her pen at him.

They spend a good couple of hours working out the kinks of a decent routine, fitting Clint into their existing plans without losing the flavour of the original act. After a while the fire dancers light up and Clint gets kind of distracted by watching Tasha spinning double staffs all decked out in leather, hair tucked up and covered in a borrowed beanie so that it won’t catch fire. Hair burns pretty easily and the smell is horrendous, so it’s a fairly ordinary safety precaution, but Tasha in brown leather and a brightly-coloured rasta beanie is a pretty hilarious sight.

To the extent of Clint’s knowledge, Tasha’s only actually fire danced a couple of times, and never with double staffs, but unsurprisingly she takes to it like a duck to water. Or, well, like a deadly and beautiful Russian assassin taking to a deadly and beautiful circus art. He knows she’s proficient in bōjutsu – and a hundred other martial arts – so she knows her way around a staff, andit makes sense that she masters four- and five-beat twirls in seconds, and very quickly takes to simultaneous vertical tosses, crossovers and over-the-shoulder rolls. Before long she’s actually inventing her own moves, which isn’t terribly helpful considering that ideally she’s supposed to be learning someone else’s act, but the other fire dancers seem impressed. She moves like a blade, like a waterfall, like something slick and precise and inevitable.

Ariadne notices his gaze and nods over to Tasha. “She your girl?”

Clint barks out a laugh. “No. I’m her boy, maybe. But not like that. She’s a... friend.” Tasha likes to say that she doesn’t have friends, she only has enemies that she hasn’t pissed off yet, love is for children, that whole spiel. But Clint knows the truth. Underneath that hard cold shell of a Tasha-exterior there’s a... well, there’s a hard cold Tasha centre, but she _is_ capable of love. The Red Room didn’t burn that out of her. In their line of work it’s safer not to openly show affection, because anything like that can be used against you, but you can’t work beside someone for more than a decade and feel nothing. Clint and Tasha are platonic soulmates, and nothing’s going to change that. Unless one of them gets brainwashed again.

The fire twirlers wrap up and Tasha wanders over, glistening with sweat and soot, looking happier than Clint’s seen her look since before the Chitauri invasion. “Barton,” she says. “Why have you not brought me here before.” It’s not a question, no matter that she phrases it as such. “This is my _calling_.”

“Please don’t forsake me for the circus,” says Clint, feeling a little worried. “I know it’s seductive but we have a job. And suites in Manhattan. You can come here when you retire, be a grey-haired ass-kicking fire dancer and live in a caravan. You can borrow my hearing aids.”

“You know I’ll never retire,” grumbles Tasha, and sits down next to him. She probably means that she’ll die in the field well before she gets to retiring age, but Clint chooses to believe that she means she’s just too awesome to ever retire. Tasha will be grey-haired and ass-kicking, sure, but she’ll do it as a superhero and not as a fire dancer. Maybe she’ll be a fire dancing superhero. Anyway, it won’t happen for a while yet – the Red Room messed her up in all sorts of ways, and not just mentally. Clint’s not sure exactly how old Tasha is but she’s a lot older than she looks.

Clint feels a sudden surge of affection for this ridiculous, beautiful, absolutely fatal creature sitting beside him. There aren’t many people he could trust to follow him here, not many people that would give a shit enough to come with him even though it’s not a dire matter of national security. It’s just Clint Barton’s fucked up childhood come back to bite him. But Tasha’s got his back. No matter how confusing everything else gets, Loki and superhero-ing and Tony’s antics and Phil being inscrutable, he can always count on Tasha Romanova. Except when she’s brainwashed. But that’s been happening less frequently these days.

He eels an arm out to wrap around her waist, and pulls her close. Her hair flops sweatily into his face and he nuzzles into her shoulder.

“I know, Clint,” whispers Tasha, returning the embrace. She strokes his hair softly, and lets him lean against her. “I know.”


	6. Chapter 6

By the time Clint returns to the caravan that evening, his arms are aching from grappling with Buck’s crappy arrows and a bow that he hasn’t used in twenty years. Also he has learnt that Ariadne has a truly phenomenal obsession with pirates, pirate outfits, pirate cussing and general pirate badassitude, which apparently also comes with a marked disdain for ninjas. Clint feels sort of offended by this; he’s not exactly a ninja himself, but there are many ninjas in his life that he is very fond of. Why can’t ninjas and pirates coexist?

He’d expressed some of these concerns to Tasha and she’d laughed her ass off. This is because Tasha is a cruel and unsympathetic creature.

When Phil opens the door to let him in, a hot rush of air flows out of the caravan, thick with the scents of bread and basil and tomato. Phil’s still wearing Steve’s plaid shirt, only now it’s stained with tomato paste and looking slightly less pristine, and its sleeves are rolled up to his elbows and dusted with flour. His feet are still bare, but no longer muddy. His toenails are painted bright scarlet. He looks more at ease than Clint’s seen him look in a very long time, though the difference is subtle; a slight loosening of the lines around his eyes, a softness to the curve of his mouth, the absence of the tic in his jaw.

Clint tries not to comment on Phil’s weird habit of stealing Steve’s things – shirts, combs, toothbrushes – but secretly he finds it hilarious. Steve just finds it baffling. Phil still gets this adorable aura of fannish glee whenever he’s in Steve’s presence, though, and Clint’s willing to humour anything that puts that happy look back into Phil’s eye, even only for a moment.

“Hi,” says Clint. “You look... good.”

Phil smiles a little, eyes crinkling, and tugs Clint closer by the loop of his jeans. They’re still out in the open, hanging on the steps of the caravan where anyone could see them, but Phil doesn’t seem to care. “So do you,” he says, though it’s a total lie. Clint’s battered and bruise-eyed and he’s got glitter in his hair. “I’m cooking pizza.”

“Pizza?” says Clint, eyebrows rising. “In that shitty little oven?”

“It’s serviceable,” says Phil, but his eyes lose their crinkle and his face closes off just a little bit. Clint bites his tongue. He’s said the wrong thing again.

“Not to malign your cooking skills,” he says quickly, trying to salvage the moment, but it’s too late, it’s lost. Phil drops his hands back down to his sides, and Clint’s skin feels very cold in the absence of Phil’s touch. “I know you’re a kitchen ninja.”

“Maybe I should add that on to my resumé,” says Phil. He folds his arms across his chest, smearing flour across his stolen shirt.

“What, you job hunting?” jokes Clint, but it falls flat, and Phil’s face closes off even more. Shit.

They used to be able to read each other like open books, everything laid bare. Now they read each other like top-secret documents, half censored, incomprehensible. The easy warmth and camaraderie is all but gone, and in its place Clint is left drowning, lost in a dark and confusing sea of contradictory signs, struggling to claw his way to the surface. Something about the encounter with Loki warped them into something unrecognisable, and Clint has no idea how to fix it. Hell, he doesn’t even know what exactly it is that’s gone wrong.

Some of his desperation must show on his face because Phil softens up a little, and moves aside to let him in. “Come on. I hope you like margherita.”

Clint thinks margherita’s the most boring pizza option in the world, but by this point he’s not going to risk voicing that thought. The day Clint Barton censors himself is a sad day indeed, but there are a great deal of things that he’s willing to do for Phil that he wouldn’t ever consider under other circumstances.

The interior of the caravan is small and cosy and dimly-lit. Tasha’s perched on top of the tiny kitchen counter, dressed in jeans and one of Phil’s sweaters. There are soot marks on her knees and her toenails are painted black with little red hourglasses on her big toes. Clint hops up beside her, snuggling into her side and resting his head on her shoulder. She smells like kerosene.

“Did you shoot all the targets?” she murmurs.

“Course,” he says. “I like your nails. Can we do mine next?”

“I’ve got some sparkly purple nail polish around here somewhere,” she says, and backflips off the kitchen counter to go hunting through her duffel bag. She pulls out a titanium spork and a handgun and three pairs of socks and then finally retrieves a little plastic bottle of glittery polish. The colour is called “You’re Turning Violet, Violet!”

Tasha slinks back onto the counter and seizes Clint’s left hand, examining it critically from all directions before deciding that his thumbnail is too ragged and needs to be filed down. Clint waits patiently while she attacks his nails with what feels like the combined forces of the Achaeans attacking Troy.

Phil looks at them both and for a moment there’s something dangerously vulnerable in his expression, something raw and untamed, and then Clint blinks and when he looks again Phil’s just as blank as ever.

It’s like double vision. On the one hand you’ve got Secret Agent Phil, a marvellous and mysterious creature with more ninja skills than Batman and more political savvy than the President. On the other hand there’s Clint’s Phil. Clint’s Phil is just a dude. He likes margherita pizza and dumb reality television and that one trick that Clint does with his pinky finger. He’s scarily good at his job, he’s been in and out of SHIELD’s med bay more times than anyone can count, he’s got three sets of Captain America underwear, and Clint is shatteringly, terrifyingly, endlessly in love with him.

There, okay. He’s said it. Said it to his internal monologue, anyway, if not out loud.

He’s in love.

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a poorly-kept secret: I'm inordinately fond of hearing what you guys have to say about this story, and I'm incredibly baffled and pleased at how many of you share my love of circuses and Clint and Clint-circuses. Thank you!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Passing reference to child abuse.
> 
> Also angstfeels.

That night Clint and Phil curl up in the flimsy little caravan bed, and Natasha makes a nest of blankets and scarves on the floor. Clint’s not entirely sure where she got all the scarves from, but she looks like some sort of crazed laundry monster, like the creature that hides inside the washing machine and steals all of his odd socks. (Clint’s not crazy. The odd sock creature _exists_ , he knows it does.) 

Phil’s the first one of them to fall asleep, and Clint finds his snuffling snores half endearing and half ridiculously, endlessly reassuring. It’s one thing to know intellectually that Phil’s alive and it’s another thing to feel it rumbling in his chest, snorting into Clint’s collarbone. Clint’s hearing isn’t the greatest so it’s not like it keeps him awake. Still, it makes him feel better to just lie here and feel the vibration of Phil’s snores. Natasha only needs about thirty seconds of sleep a night because of what the Red Room did to her, so they both lie awake for a while, not talking, just listening to each other breathe.

Natasha’s eyes are bright and feline, glowing a little in the darkness. She and Clint watch each other for a while, and then Clint rolls over, wrapping an arm around Phil’s torso and tucking a leg between his partner’s thighs.

Moonlight streaks through the window and paints silvery trails across Phil’s chest, highlighting the horrible, knotted scar just above his heart. Clint traces a hand over it, and Phil twitches in his sleep, then mumbles something unintelligible and presses his face into Clint’s neck. Clint’s heart aches a little at that. What have they come to, that the only time they can show affection to each other is when one of them is unconscious?

Clint sleeps in fitful bursts, waking up occasionally to half-remembered nightmares. At about three in the morning he wakes up entirely convinced that Phil is dead and buried, and almost has a panic attack before he registers the feel of Phil’s body, the corded muscles beneath pale, slightly freckled skin.

He’d been so thrilled the first time he realised that Phil had freckles. Clint had spent the first two weeks tirelessly mocking him for it, and then he’d spent the two weeks after that tirelessly mapping out every single freckle with his tongue. And then after that he’d started playing connect-the-dots.

What? It’s romantic.

By the time the sun rises Clint’s back muscles feel like one big snarl, which is just shameful, and goes to show how out of shape he’s gotten since entering into this sedentary Avengers lifestyle. There are no more forty-eight-hour stretches on the shooting ground without food or water, no more lashes from Duquesne – from the Swordsman – every time he misses a bullseye; there aren’t even any three-month-long ops or shooting with improvised weapons made from toothpicks and dental floss. No, it’s just all cake and supervillains now, and bows made personally by Tony Stark.

Clint’s gone soft.

The Swordsman would be rolling in his grave.

(Not that Clint has a problem with the Swordsman rolling in his grave. The bastard can rot, for all he cares. He’s got nothing to prove to anyone.)

Dawn pokes its fingers in through the window, and Clint rolls out of bed stealthily, careful not to wake Phil. Natasha’s already awake, bundled up in her soon-to-be-scarf-monster, but she doesn’t say a word. Clint makes breakfast, eggs sunny side up, and bacon, and garlicky mushrooms, and a feeble attempt at toast. Toast is Clint’s nemesis. Well, that’s slightly inaccurate; it’s not toast that’s his nemesis so much as toasters. Toasters are the devil. So, yeah, he ends up setting off the smoke alarm and then Phil wakes up after all and starts yelling and Clint decides to forego breakfast entirely and escape to the Big Top.

The Big Top is already bustling with club jugglers and trapeze artists and sword swallowers, and Clint manages to finagle a cup of coffee out of Ariadne, who’s rushing around the tent looking harassed and trying to tell everyone what to do. Mr. Loomy, the weird guy from Marcy’s caravan, is standing in the corner staring at everyone and generally being fantastically stalkerific. That guy still gives Clint the creeps.

Clint’s about to go over there and investigate Mr. Creepertastic when he notices something completely crazy and wild, at which point he drops his coffee on the ground, and the lid comes off and it spills all over his shoes.

“Hey,” says Ariadne indignantly. “ _Not_ cool. The coffee is sacred, man.”

“Who’s that guy over there?” demands Clint, staring wildly between Ariadne and a tall, blond hunk of a man spinning plates in centre stage.

“Oh, him? That’s James,” says Ariadne, looking at him like he’s gone temporarily insane, which he’s pretty sure he has. “He’s new, I know, we’re not supposed to be recruiting right now, you and your friend were a special case, but he _pleaded_ and he gave me these _eyes_ and I just, well, I couldn’t say no.”

“Oh, I bet you couldn’t,” says Clint viciously, and storms over to the centre stage, ignoring Ariadne’s protests.

There’s crazy and then there’s _crazy_. Clint’s pretty sure he’s not hallucinating, so the only other option is –

“Hi, Steve,” he says.

“Hi,” says Steve Rogers, somehow managing to look endearingly bashful while spinning six plates in the air. “You know, this is easier than it looks, I think I’ve really got a talent for it –”

“Don’t even start,” says Clint, holding up a hand. Steve looks wounded, but Clint is not going to be swayed by those ridiculously sweet puppy-dog eyes, no he is not, no way in hell, well, okay, but only a little bit. “What are you doing here?”

“You shouldn’t even have to ask that,” says Steve, looking even more wounded. “We’re your team, Clint. We’re here for you.”

“Don’t you have better things to be doing?” asks Clint, waving his arms around and almost but not quite knocking one of Steve’s plates out of his grasp. “Saving the world, and, and rescuing kittens, and winding up Tony by pretending to be adorably innocent while making incredibly dirty innuendoes?”

“I don’t _pretend_ to be adorably innocent,” says Steve with dignity. “It’s my natural state. Anyway, it’s not my fault that Tony’s gullible.”

“ _So_ not the point,” grits out Clint. “What, am I going to find Thor as a human cannonball? Tony in the popcorn stand?”

“Tony’s learning to stiltwalk, actually,” says Steve.

Clint gapes at him.

“Well,” the soldier hedges, “he _started_ learning to stiltwalk, and then he decided that he needed to make better stilts, so he went back to the lab for a while, and then he came back and I’m pretty sure his new ones shoot lasers. So. Watch out for that.”

Clint is speechless. It’s a new experience for him.

“Also, Thor’s putting together a strongman act,” adds Steve. “And, uh, Bruce is around here somewhere too. He can’t seem to decide on anything. Last I saw he was clowning, but before that he was trying to learn devil sticks, but he wasn’t very good at it, and before _that_ he was unicycling but that really didn’t end well–”

“ _Stop_ ,” wails Clint, clawing at his ears. It’s times like this that he really regrets having the super-duper hearing aids that SHIELD developed for him; there are some things that he just doesn’t want to hear. “ _Why_ are you _here_? This is a _holiday op_! I am confronting my past! I am sharing a caravan with SHIELD’s third-in-command and the Black Widow! This is not the time for socialising!”

It’s possible that Clint inserted way too many exclamation marks into that sentence. Whatever, he’s having a psychological breakdown. Maybe it’s a mid-life crisis? He thinks that mid-life crises usually involve, like, compensating sportscars and sudden career changes, and not adorable circus superheroes, but whatever. Captain America is plate-spinning and the Hulk is learning to be a clown. Nothing else will ever be this weird.

“Clint,” says Steve very sincerely, “I want you to understand that I believe in teamwork, and I believe that a team is like a family, maybe a slightly dysfunctional family if you include Tony, and families exist to be there for each other –”

Clint’s not sure exactly how that sentence ends because he runs screaming out of the Big Top before Steve has the chance to finish. On his way out, Thor waves to him, dressed in a leopard-skin loincloth and with his hair teased into dreadlocks. He’s lifting three giggling acrobalancers on one shoulder.

Honestly, Clint really never thought he’d reach a point where he’d be running _away_ from the circus. He’s pretty sure that’s a new low, even for him.

Thor in a  _loincloth._

He wants to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been a little while! I've been super inspired lately but I've also been super busy, so all of my story ideas have just been whirling around my head like tiny cracky asteroids.
> 
> *loves you all*


	8. Chapter 8

Clint’s stomach is grumbling from the lack of breakfast so he sweet-talks a bagel out of a passing contortionist. He eats it resentfully in two huge bites, imagining that the bagel is Thor’s accursed loincloth and that he’s destroying it with his big, sharp, gnawing teeth. 

Except not in a sexy way.

Definitely not in a sexy way.

Clint feels kind of dirty just thinking about it.

He slinks back to the Big Top after a while, because as mentally disturbing as Steve’s speeches about _family_ had been, Clint’s still more afraid of Ariadne that he is of confronting his own problems. And Ariadne will not hesitate to eat him alive if he doesn’t come back in time for rehearsals. She’ll munch on him like a bagel. Or a loincloth. With no remorse.

On the way back he runs into Bruce, who is not on a unicycle nor wearing clown makeup, which is only a little bit reassuring. Clint’s honestly a little galled that the only Avenger he _hasn’t_ run into is Tony, because Tony’s laser stilts sound kind of awesome. Clint wants in on that. He could totally use a laser-shooting bow. Right? Right.

“Are you lost in your internal monologue again?” asks Bruce.

“What? _No_ ,” scoffs Clint.

Bruce just grins at him. It’s totally unfair that he gets to be the Zen one. Clint wants to be the Zen Avenger. He’s the one that grew up around hippies, it’s practically his birthright.

“I like your balls,” says Clint.

Okay, that sounds kind of weird out of context.

Bruce has taken up contact juggling. There, see? Context. Totally not weird anymore.

Er.

“I like yours too,” says Bruce, looking pleased.

Clint, on the other hand, is not contact juggling, nor is he regular juggling, nor is he holding any kind of circus sphere. Bruce made it weird again. Bruce made it _totally weird_. Thanks, Bruce.

“You’re welcome,” says Bruce. Did Clint say that out loud?

“I never got the hang of contact juggling,” says Clint, trying to rescue the non-weird element of this rapidly-weirdening conversation. “Don’t have the patience for object manipulation, I guess.”

“I find it soothing,” says Bruce peacefully, rolling one of the acrylic spheres around his palm. He turns his hand over, resting the sphere on the back of his hand, and then rolls it up to the crook of his elbow without breaking stride. Clint’s reluctantly impressed.

“So apparently Tony’s got laser stilts,” says Clint. He’s not jealous. Okay, he’s maybe a little bit jealous. “You know, we should just quit our day job and start up a superhero circus. D’you think we could teach the Hulk slacklining?”

“He’d like the bouncing,” says Bruce, starting up a new set of isolations. “And he wouldn’t need a safety net.”

Clint hums. “He’d get bored if we didn’t let him out to smash things occasionally, though.”

“True,” says Bruce.

They reach the Big Top, and Clint hesitates at the tent flap that stands in for a doorway. “You know you guys didn’t have to come along, right?” he says, a little unsurely. “I was handling things fine by myself. I don’t... You didn’t need to come.”

“I know,” says Bruce. His eyes are wide and dark and very kind. “We wanted to.”

Clint swallows and can’t meet his gaze. He walks into the Big Top and immediately gets dazzled by some kind of lightshow. “What the hell...”

He squints, and sees Tony Stark on the centre stage, surrounded by a bunch of tumblers in glittery spandex. Tony’s wearing stilts, yeah, but they’re not regular stilts. They don’t make him look taller as such, but they give him a hell of a lot of bounce.

Clint should just lock Tony and the Hulk in a room with a trampoline and have done with it.

He and Bruce stare in silence for a moment, and then Tony does a backflip and some kind of energy beam comes shooting out of the stilts and burns a hole through the canvas of the Big Top. Someone starts screaming and then someone else starts shrieking with laughter, and then, of course, the carnies all crowd in closer trying to convince Tony to do it again. Tony just soaks in their adoration like he’s the new Circus Jesus or something.

Clint doesn’t know what the hell that was, but it certainly wasn’t a laser.

“Okay,” says Clint, shouldering his way in through the crowd, “okay, you guys have had your fun, I think it’s time you step back and let the professionals actually _rehearse_ , Tony.”

Tony honest-to-god pouts. “Clint,” he says. “Cupcake. Princess Merida. Don’t harsh my mellow. I’m having the time of my life, here, I’ve never been surrounded by so many people who love bright colours and random destruction.”

“Yeah, but you’re not exactly keeping a _low profile_ ,” hisses Clint.

“Man’s got a point,” says Bruce, materialising at Clint’s shoulder. Clint almost has a heart attack. Shit, for someone whose alter ego is a huge rampaging irradiated monster, Bruce can sure be stealthy when he wants to be.

The only saving grace of this whole sorry situation is that at least Thor and his loincloth are no longer in sight.

And then, of course, Thor and his loincloth show up, with Steve in tow.

“Friend Clint!” booms Thor, baring a grin with a seriously scary amount of teeth in it. “It has been too long! I am much enjoying my introduction to this fair land of Carson’s Carnival!”

Steve looks embarrassed. “Thor, I’ve tried to explain this. Carson’s isn’t a nation.”

“But they have a flag!” says Thor plaintively, looking heartbreakingly confused. “Did you not tell the tale of your armour, and how through its colouring it signifies the great nation of the United States of America?”

“Lots of things can have flags,” says Steve. “Like, uh.” He’s obviously struggling.

“The queer community,” offers Tony. “Political parties. Bands, sometimes. Ooh, pirates! Pirates have flags! Steve,” he levels a gaze at the Captain, deeply sincere, “we must create a queer political musical pirate flag. It is our _duty_.”

“Maybe next weekend,” says Steve weakly. “Once we’re done with the circus thing.”

Clint buries his face in his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little baby chapter to tide you over until, um, whenever I manage to write the next chapter. I have way too many WiPs right now. Promise I'll get to them all eventually though!
> 
> If anyone’s having trouble visualising: [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knowhnbCV-E) is a video of contact juggling, and [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_PJHIv1bZE) is a video of Tony's jumping stilts (sadly sans lasers).


	9. Chapter 9

Clint’s just starting to feel like he’s settling into a routine, like he’s starting to fit in again, so naturally that’s when everything goes to shit.

He’s on his way back to Phil’s caravan, hefting a giant cuddly Captain America toy he’d won from one of the ring-toss stalls. He’s hoping to avoid Steve because Steve finds Phil’s Cap obsession equal parts sweet and faintly alarming. Clint’s just hoping to make Phil smile again.

Anyway, he doesn’t quite make it to the caravan, because on the way two masked goons catch him from behind and knock him out with some kind of weaponised gas. Clint is sick of knockout gas.

He comes to in one of the training tents set up behind the Big Top, strapped to a chair with a throbbing headache. The tent is hot and muggy, sunlight tinted yellow and purple from the heavy canvas overhead.

Creeper Cullen is back, only he’s exchanged his hoodie for some kind of skull… hoodie… cape thing. The guy looks a lot more muscly than he did looming in the corner of Marcy’s caravan. Clint recognises him, finally, from the costume if nothing else. He’d been briefed on this guy years ago.

His name is the Taskmaster.

“Okay,” says Clint hoarsely. “I realise that you’re a supervillain and you don’t really abide by, y’know, rules of etiquette. But if you wanted to get me alone you could have just asked me out to dinner.”

The Taskmaster just stares at him. Are his eyes glowing? Clint thinks his eyes are glowing. “I know who you are, Hawkeye,” says the villain eventually. “What did you think to achieve, coming here?”

“Me? Oh, nothing,” says Clint, bobbing his head. “Just got nostalgic for the old trick shooting acts. Thought I’d swing by, see how everyone was doing.”

“You lie,” says the Taskmaster. “You were brought here.”

Clint’s head is killing him, and he’s way too tired for this bullshit. “Never mind me,” he says. “What are you doing here? Was it the costumes? I get it, I love ‘em too. You’d think I’d get enough of the crazy outfits, being a superhero and all, but sometimes I just get a hankering for glitter spandex –”

The Taskmaster smacks him upside the head, so hard that Clint’s ears start ringing. “Who brought you here?”

“Nobody,” croaks Clint. Okay, so the head-smacking really didn’t help his headache. He stares fuzzily past the villain, noting the contents of the tent. It’s set up differently to the usual training tents. There’s all sorts of weird technology here. Obstacle courses, scary-looking machines and simulators… there’s even an anti-grav unit in the corner. Tony would kill to get his hands on one of those. “Man, has anyone ever told you that you might have a teeny little aggression problem?”

The Taskmaster’s lip curls. “It’s a shame,” he remarks. “You might have been useful. My –”

“Yeah, no,” interrupts Clint. “Hold it right there, I don’t actually want to hear your evil villain plans.” He fakes a yawn. Seriously, if Clint had a nickel for every boring-as-fuck supervillain gloating speech he’s had to sit through, he’d have… a whole lot of nickels.

The Taskmaster clenches his fists. Clint has about half a second to almost regret mouthing off before the canvas wall of the tent explodes in a fiery ball of… something. Tony comes stomping in on his possibly-nuclear stilts, and the Hulk stomps in behind him, roaring and waving his big green arms around. Clint squints a little. Is the Hulk wearing…?

Yes, the Hulk is wearing face paint.

Specifically: Iron Man face paint.

“I’ve changed my mind,” says Clint. “I don’t want to be rescued.”

“Too bad, Robin Hood,” says Tony cheerfully. “I’m in a rescuing mood.”

Clint groans and buries his face in his hands. The Taskmaster snarls and is about to launch into either a scathing invective or some kind of counter-attack, but he’s interrupted by Steve’s shield, which comes flying out of nowhere to hit him in the face. The Taskmaster is knocked to the ground with a clang, and then the Hulk sits on him. His cronies had already left by the time Clint woke up so all in all it’s a pretty anticlimactic rescue.

There’s a cool hand on the side of his face, and Clint knows without turning around that it’s Phil’s. “Hello, ninja,” he murmurs, turning his face up into Phil’s stroking hand.

“Hey,” says Phil, voice gentler than usual. He traces the edges of what will soon be a very pretty purple bruise. At least it’ll match Clint’s nail polish. “I thought I told you not to get captured by evil villains any more.”

“Pretty sure Carson’s Carnival left that part out of the brochure,” says Clint, and he grins, and Phil grins back, and then suddenly they’re both giggling at each other, even though it’s not funny at all.

That’s the moment that Tasha chooses to swing in from out of nowhere. She dumps two familiar-looking thugs on the ground in front of Clint, and then looks up hopefully, like a cat depositing dead birds on the doorstep.

“Let me guess,” says Clint. “You’ve figured out their evil plot.”

Tasha cocks her head. “You didn’t stick around for the gloating?”

Clint shrugs. “What can I say? It gets old.”

She hums. “Oh, well, you know. It’s the Taskmaster. He’s been using the carnival as his own personal supervillain recruiting-and-training ring. Same old schtick.”

Clint glances around. “I don’t see any baby supervillains.”

“I didn’t say he was good at it,” points out Tasha.

The Taskmaster lets out a squeak of protest but doesn’t manage to dislodge the Hulk.

Steve retrieves his shield and then wanders up, looking bashful. “Hi Clint,” he says. “You okay?”

“Great,” says Clint. “Can someone untie me?”

“I can do that!” says Tony, aiming a stilt.

“NO,” Phil and Tasha yell in unison.

Tasha pulls out a knife from… wherever she keeps her knives, and slices through Clint’s bindings. He rubs at his wrists a little, and then rests his head on Phil’s chest. “Seriously though,” he says. “Thanks for the rescue. This’s been fun, we should do it again sometime.”

“You were right that there was a threat here,” says Steve. “Well done, for identifying it.”

There is a distant whistling sound, followed by a great ripping of fabric as Thor comes tearing through the canvas ceiling, wielding Mjolnir and looking about as terrifying as it’s possible for a leopardskin-loincloth-wearing demigod to look. He lands so hard that he sends up a spray of dirt, and then looks up, and then looks heartbroken.

“Friends, I see I have missed the battle,” says Thor, woebegone.

“Sorry, buddy,” says Tony, patting him companionably on the shoulder. “Next time we’ll wait a couple of minutes.”

“Yeah, while I get punched around,” says Clint acidly. “I’m feeling the love, Stark.”

Tony raises a hand to his chest in mock horror. “That hurts, Susan, it really does.”

Clint raises an eyebrow.

“Susan Pevensie?” says Tony, looking around at them. “What, none of you read Narnia? Philistines.”

Steve’s squinting at Phil and looking kind of baffled. “Is that… is that my shirt?”

Phil blushes a brilliant shade of red. It’s a beautiful sight.

“No,” says Clint loyally. “It’s my shirt. It just looks like yours.”

Steve doesn’t look any less confused, but Phil presses a kiss to the back of Clint’s neck.

“So,” says Tasha. “Are we leaving now? Job done, deliver the villain to SHIELD?”

“I don’t know,” says Clint. “I’d kind of like to stick around. One last show. Phil, what d’you think?”

“Yeah,” says Phil. He slides an arm around Clint’s shoulders. “Yeah, we can stay. You owe me breakfast, anyway.”

“Okay,” says Clint. He searches for words, but can’t seem to find any, so he says, “Okay,” again.

What? He’s got a concussion, possibly. A teeny tiny concussion.

Okay maybe a slightly large concussion.

Phil doesn’t seem to mind, anyway, because he just smiles, and kicks Tasha in the ankle when she rolls her eyes.

They’ll be okay, Clint thinks.

Maybe not now, but soon.


	10. Chapter 10

Marcella Carson is standing in the centre of the centre stage, and she is magnificent.

She’s wearing a top hat and a tailcoat, and strange glittery makeup that trails over her dark skin in complicated patterns. Her eyes are lined with kohl, and the spotlights cast eerie shadows over her face.

After that whole debacle with the Taskmaster, Marcy and Clint had gotten spectacularly drunk together. She’d thanked him, and he’d confessed his ridiculous star-crossed overwhelming love for Phil, and then she’d hit him over the head and told him to go fuck his boyfriend already.

Marcy and Clint have a complex (but awesome!) relationship.

Anyway, she’d let him stick around until the opening night show. He’s not staying for the rest of them, but one last show can’t hurt. One last hurrah.

“Hello, friends,” says Marcy Carson, Ringmaster Extraordinaire. Her voice is soft, but the mikes pick it up easily. Tony might have snuck in and augmented the tech crew’s equipment slightly. Okay, a little more than slightly. Hopefully nothing will blow up until Clint’s out of the danger zone.

Fire flares up from the corners of the stage, and the audience murmurs excitedly. Marcy gives them a smile with a lot of teeth.

“Tonight, you are going to see something marvellous,” she says. Her voice slowly rises in volume, hot and promising. “Tonight you will see dragons, and monsters, and beautiful beasts, and unimaginable feats. Tonight you will see a man who speaks to animals, contortionists who can fit into a box no longer than my forearm, trampolinists, acro balancers, fire dancers, and magicians. Tonight you will see the Amazing Madame Cassandra, who can predict the future with an error margin of 0.05%. Tonight you will see Trick Shot, who never misses, and tonight – tonight, and for one night only,” she says, flinging her arms out, “I give you – Clint Barton, the World’s Greatest Marksman!”

The stage is plunged into blackness, and a few people in the audience shriek, half in terror and half in excitement. Clint’s harness spools down from the ceiling, and a spotlight swings lazily around to focus on him.

Ariadne had won: Clint is dressed like a pirate, complete with floofy blouse, too-tight pants and fake cutlass. The fake cutlass is the worst part. Clint already has a perfectly good _bow_ , and if he wanted to wear a cutlass he’d wear a real cutlass, dammit.

The blouse is purple. Clint’s actually kind of tempted to make this his regular crime-fighting outfit. He wouldn’t get to show off his biceps as much, but on the other hand, _pirates_.

From the way the lights are set up Clint can’t actually make out anyone in the audience, but he imagines that he can feel Phil’s gaze on him, warm and encouraging. The rest of the Avengers are here too, for moral support. Well, most of them are here for moral support. Tony’s just here to mock him.

Clint pulls Rosie off his back and fits an arrow against her body. As he releases it, the Kevlar wick at the tip of the arrow bursts into flame, arcing over the stage like a shooting star. It lands harmlessly in the sand pit they’d set up, but of course the audience can’t see that; all they can see is the massive model pirate ship suddenly lit up in front of them. The whole thing’s mechanical, but thanks to Tony the rocking is so smooth that it might as well be real, and thanks to Ariadne’s genius sound effects, it feels like they’ve brought the ocean to the Big Top.

Buck’s in the pirate ship, wearing full-on pirate regalia that is, okay, slightly more badass than Clint’s, but only because he has a magnificent coat and a robot parrot on his shoulder. Tony had insisted on the robot parrot. Clint’s a little worried that the parrot’s going to blow up at some point, so he’d refused one of his own.

“Avast!” roars Buck, pointing his equally-fake cutlass at the skies. “’Tis the notorious pirate Barton, terror of the High Seas and all around Not a Very Nice Bloke!”

Yeah, Clint didn’t write the dialogue.

Anyway, that’s his cue.

“Captain Trick Shot!” he returns, notching another arrow. “Your famous treasure isn’t safe from me! I’ll roast the flesh from your bones!” He lets the arrow loose, and it knocks the feathered hat from Buck’s head in a burst of flame. Buck gapes theatrically, clutching at his suddenly-bare scalp, getting a bit of a giggle from the audience.

“My hat!” he says in horror. “You killed my hat! I’ll get you for this, Barton!”

And with that Buck readies his own bow, and sends an arrow hurtling towards Clint; halfway there it splits into several different arrows and explodes into colourful fireworks, sending sparks fluttering down onto the stage. The music rises into a crescendo, the backstage band going nuts with drums and trumpets and one kid bashing a triangle _way_ too enthusiastically. Triangles have no place in circus pirate shows. Clint has very strong feelings on this matter.

The routine goes pretty smoothly after that. Clint and Buck trade increasingly tricky shots with each other. Buck stomps around in his pirate ship and Clint swoops around the stage in his hanging harness, feeling like he’s flying, letting loose arrow after arrow. The hot spotlight beams down over him, causing sweat prickles at the back of his neck, and his muscles are starting to ache from the strain, but Clint’s having the time of his life.

At the end of the act Buck’s pirate ship goes up in a burst of (illusionary) flames, and Clint gets shot out of the sky, diving down in a long, acrobatic twirl. The music trails away, the lights go dark, and Marcy returns to the stage to introduce the next act. (The next act is Thor lifting a train carriage with a bunch of acrobats leaping around on top of it. The demigod had been so excited that Ariadne hadn’t been able to refuse him.)

At the end of the show, all of the artists come out and take a bow, and the audience cheers wildly. Clint’s pretty sure he can pick Phil’s voice out of the roar of the crowd, and it makes him blush helplessly.

When he walks out of the Big Top, dusk is just starting to fall, and Phil’s waiting for him.

“Give you a ride?” offers Phil, hands in his pockets.

“I’ll take a ride from you anytime,” says Clint, grinning slyly.

Phil doesn’t laugh at the joke. Instead he steps into Clint’s space, slowly and deliberately, until their noses are brushing. “That a promise?” he asks, voice low.

Clint’s pretty sure his heart is about to beat out of his chest, and there’s no way that Phil hasn’t noticed. “Yeah,” he says, exhaling. “Yeah, it is.”

“Good,” says Phil, and kisses him.

It takes them a long while to separate, and when they do Clint can’t stop smiling, like he’s drugged or something. He tries to will the corners of his mouth down but it doesn’t work. Phil’s eyes are all crinkled up, and he presses another kiss to Clint’s chin, to his cheekbone, to the soft skin just under his ear.

“I missed you,” admits Phil, soft into Clint’s hairline.

“I haven’t left,” says Clint.

“You know what I mean.”

Clint shrugs, and darts in close, stealing another kiss. “Let’s get back to the Tower,” he suggests. “I’ll cook lasagne.”

Phil raises his eyebrows. “You, cook?”

“I can cook,” sniffs Clint, in mock outrage. “Just because you’ve never seen me do it doesn’t mean I can’t do it.”

“I’ve seen you cook,” says Phil. “I’ve seen you _try_ to cook, anyway.”

“I’ll cook lasagne,” says Clint determinedly. “And then when I fuck it up we can get takeout.”

Phil laughs. “Okay.”

They walk back to Phil’s car, bantering back and forth. A warm feeling settles just beneath Clint’s breastbone at the sight of Phil smiling. It feels like something indefinably broken has been put back together.

They’ve still got a way to go, but they’re better than they were.

Maybe Clint should run away to the circus more often.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been absolutely overwhelmed by the positive response to this story. You guys are absurd and lovely and thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts.


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